The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
President falsely alleges fraud
His campaign challenges vote counting process; Biden calls for calm.
WASHINGTON — With votes still being counted across the nation, President Donald Trump on Thursday sought to undermine confifidence in the nation’s election, while Democrat Joe Biden offered reassurances that the counting could be trusted and urged patience from Americans.
The candidates’ sharply contrasting postures intensified a national moment of uncertainty as the nation and the world waited to learn which man would collect the 270 electoral votes needed to capture the presidency.
Trump pursued legal options with little success, working the phones and escalating efforts to sow doubt about the outcome of the race.
His path to victory narrow, Trump pushed unsupported allegations of electoral misconduct in a series of tweets and insisted the ongoing vote count of ballots submitted before and on Election Day must cease. And in his fifirst public appearance since late on Election Night, he amplified the conspiracy theories amid the trappings of presidential power.
“This is a case when they are trying to steal an election, they are trying to rig an election,” said Trump of Democrats, whom he accused of corruption while providing no evidence.
He made similar claims about election integrity during the 2016 campaign, which he went on to win. This time, he was speaking not as a candidate, but as the president of the United States.
Biden took a different tack, speaking briefly to reporters after attending a COVID- 19 briefing to declare that “each ballot must be counted.”
“I ask everyone to stay calm. The process is working,” said Biden. “It is the will of the voters. No one, not anyone else who chooses the president of the United States of America.”
Biden’s victories in Michigan andWisconsin put him in a commanding position, but Trump showed no sign of giving up. It could take several more days for the vote count to conclude and a clear winner emerge.
With millions of ballots yet to be tabulated, Biden already had received more than 72 million votes, the most in history.
Trump’s campaign engaged
in a flurry of legal activity to try to improve the Republican president’s chances, requesting a recount in Wisconsin and filing lawsuits inPennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia. Statewide recounts in Wisconsin have historically changed the vote tally by only a few hundred votes; Biden led by more than 20,000 ballots out of nearly 3.3 million counted.
Judges inGeorgia and Michigan quickly dismissed Trump campaign lawsuits there Thursday.
Biden has already won Michigan and Wisconsin. The contests in Georgia and Pennsylvania, along withNevada and North Carolina, were tight with votes still being tabulated.
The Trump campaign said it wasconfidentthe presidentwould
ultimately pull out a victory in Arizona, where votes were also still being counted, including in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous area. The AP has declared Biden the winner in Arizona and saidThursday that itwas monitoring the vote count as it proceeded. Other media outlets have not yet declared a winner.
Trump’s legal challenges faced long odds. He would have to win multiple suits inmultiple states in order to stop vote counts, since more than one state was undeclared.
There were no obvious grounds for the Justice Department to attempt to intervene to stopa vote count at the state level, unless the federal government could somehow assert a violation of federal voting laws or the Constitution.
The department could theoretically file a brief in support of a Trump campaign lawsuit if it believed therewere federal concerns at stake, but that intervention would be extraordinary.
While Trump has insisted that ballot counting stop, itwas unclear exactlywhat thatwould include. Counting for votes received by Nov. 3 was continuing, but roughly 20 states allowballots to be counted if postmarked byNov. 3 but received in the days after. In some states that is as long as nine days, or evenlonger. Someof the deadline changeswere made as a result of the pandemic, but others are just routine parts of state election laws. Trump has fixated on Pennsylvania, where the Supreme Court refused to
stop a court’s ruling that allowed for a three- day extension.
He also said hewas taking fraud claims to court — but most of the lawsuits only demand better access for campaign observers to locationswhere ballots are being processed and counted. A judge in Georgia dismissed the campaign’s suit there less than 12 hours after it was filed. And aMichigan judge dismissed a Trump lawsuit over whether enough GOP challenge rs had access to handling of absentee ballots.
Biden attorney Bob Bauer said the suitswere legally “meritless.” Their only purpose, he said “is to create an opportunity for them to message falsely about what’s taking place in the electoral process.”